A useful aspect of content management systems is the functionality that is built into the content management system including being able to apply uniform policies to content managed by the system (for example, access, retention services, searching services, version control, backup, etc.). However, the ability for these services to access all the content under management can be problematic for security. For example, using a global search in some cases would show the existence of documents that should be kept secret (for example, a reduction in force plan, a merger or acquisition proposal, etc.). In some cases, it would be useful for a small group of users to be able to take advantage of the capabilities of the content management system with regard to accessing a specific set of content items or objects to the exclusion of other users of the content management system.